Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie is a Seminole

Seminole

The Seminole are a Native American people originally of Florida, who now reside primarily in that state and Oklahoma. The Seminole nation emerged in a process of ethnogenesis out of groups of Native Americans, most significantly Creeks from what is now Georgia and Alabama, who settled in Florida in...

-Muscogee-Diné

Navajo people

The Navajo of the Southwestern United States are the largest single federally recognized tribe of the United States of America. The Navajo Nation has 300,048 enrolled tribal members. The Navajo Nation constitutes an independent governmental body which manages the Navajo Indian reservation in the...

 photographer, curator, and educator living in Davis, California

Davis, California

Davis is a city in Yolo County, California, United States. It is part of the Sacramento–Arden-Arcade–Roseville Metropolitan Statistical Area...

.

Background

Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie was born into the Bear and Raccoon Clans of the Seminole and Muscogee Nations and born for the Tsinajinnie Clan of the Navajo Nation

Navajo Nation

The Navajo Nation is a semi-autonomous Native American-governed territory covering , occupying all of northeastern Arizona, the southeastern portion of Utah, and northwestern New Mexico...

, as her mother was Seminole and Muscogee and her father, Andrew Van Tsinajinnie, was Diné. Andrew (b. 1916) was a painter and muralist who studied at the Studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Santa Fe is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is the fourth-largest city in the state and is the seat of . Santa Fe had a population of 67,947 in the 2010 census...

.

Hulleah was born in 1954 in Phoenix, Arizona

Phoenix, Arizona

Phoenix is the capital, and largest city, of the U.S. state of Arizona, as well as the sixth most populated city in the United States. Phoenix is home to 1,445,632 people according to the official 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data...

. She moved to the Navajo Reservation in 1966. In 1975, she began her art education at the Institute of American Indian Arts

Institute of American Indian Arts

The Institute of American Indian Arts is a college focused on Native American art. It is situated in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It is congressionally chartered, and was created by an executive order of former American President John F. Kennedy in 1962...

 in Santa Fe. In 1978, Hulleah enrolled in the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland

Oakland, California

Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...

, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting with a photography minor in 1981. She earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in Studio Arts from University of California, Irvine

University of California, Irvine

The University of California, Irvine , founded in 1965, is one of the ten campuses of the University of California, located in Irvine, California, USA...

 in 2002.

Artwork

Although she is a photographer, Hulleah often hand-tints her photographs or used them in collage. She has also used unusual supports for her work, such as car hoods. She shoots her own original photographs, as well as retooling historical photographs of Native Americans. Hulleah also works in fine art film and videography.

Career

Since 2004, Tsinhnahjinnie has been faculty in the Department of Native American studies at University of California, Davis

University of California, Davis

The University of California, Davis is a public teaching and research university established in 1905 and located in Davis, California, USA. Spanning over , the campus is the largest within the University of California system and third largest by enrollment...

, where she is an Associate Professor and serves as Director of the C. N. Gorman Museum. At Davis, she has organized conferences, such as "Visual Sovereignty", bringing together indigenous photographers from around the world.

Quote

"I have been photographing for thirty-five years, but the photographs I take are not for White people to look at Native people. I take photographs so that Native people can look at Native people. I make photographs for Native people."

Published writings

• Lidchi, Henrietta and Tsinhnahjinnie, H. J., eds. Visual Currencies: Native American Photography. Edinburgh: National Museums of Scotland, 2008.
• Tsinhnahjinnie, H. J. and Passalacqua, Veronica, eds. Our People, Our Land, Our Images: International Indigenous Photography. Berkeley: Heyday Books, 2008. ISBN 978-1597140577.
• Tsinhnahjinnie, H. J. "Our People, Our Land, Our Images." Native Peoples Magazine. Nov/Dec. 2006
• Tsinhnahjinnie, H. J. “Native American Photography." The Oxford Companion to Photography Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004
• Tsinhnahjinnie, H. J. “When is a Photograph Worth a Thousand Words?” Photography's Other Histories. C. Pinney and N. Peterson. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003: 40-52.